Month: April 2020

First-time mortgage applications have fallen for five straight weeks and Y-o-Y activity is now down a painful 35%. Add to that a 42-point fall in the NAHB Housing Market index for March to 30, the lowest level since 6/12 and…

Continued Contraction In 20Q1, GDP probably declined at an annual rate of 5%. In 20Q2, the decline will be an ugly 24%. In 20Q3 GDP grows by 2% and in 20Q4 by a strong 7%. In total, GDP will contract…

In Fed Chairman Jay Powell’s press conference last week he put down several critical markers. First, rates are low and will stay low for a long time! Second, the Fed will make purchases as large as necessary to keep markets…

In the first half of FY20, the deficit was $746.6 billion, up 7.6% compared to the same period in FY19; the 8th largest deficit/GDP ratio since 1947. Tax receipts were up 6% to $1.604 trillion, outlays rose by 7% to…

The Friday File: The biggest cruise ship, the Symphony of the Seas (2018) with gross tonnage of 228,081 and a maximum capacity of 6,680 people. The next largest, the Harmony of the Seas (2016) with gross tonnage of 226,963 and…

While initial jobless claims for the week ending 4/3/20 hit a stunning 6.6 million persons, and raises to a colossal 16.8 million the number who have lost jobs in the last three weeks, the Fed is offering new lending facilities…

The profoundly ill-timed oil market price-war between Saudi Arabia and Russia has not only pushed oil prices to twenty-year lows but is also pushing up storage costs. The current elevated production rate combined with depressed demand means storage facilities will…

With a new Conronavirus bill possibly working its way through Congress, the key thing it (and the $2.2 trillion CARES act) must do is help workers stay attached to employers, help small businesses stay solvent as they lose income due…

In a usual month, about a million jobs are created in the US and about 800,000 are destroyed, with net job growth of +200,000. The reason the March job report looked relatively bad at -700,000, is because there was reasonably…

The Friday File: Girl Scouts sell about 200 million boxes of cookies/year. At $5/box, that’s $1 billion in sales, more than the annual US sales of Oreos, the best-selling US cookie. Thin Mints are the favorite of 24% of Americans.…